Michael Louis Serafin-Wells: News

The shocking, sudden, tragic loss of Summer 10 months ago tonight has been the heaviest weight we will ever bear. Hence the silence from these pages. But here's what's underway. In the deep paralysis of mourning, Michael was unable to continue work for several months but slowly began to write the new songs that will, with the Brooklyn sessions Summer sang on, together, form the new record. It will be a mixture of "proper" studio recordings and home ones (more on that in a related post). Summer loved the raw feel, the immediateness and intimacy of our demos and so we think it altogether right finding an amalgam of the two. The initial limited-avail pressing of the record will be a double CD (14 tracks) with artwork and a poster. There will also be a digital release. The record is called "Of Love & Loss". Jason Sutherland - who was instrumental in getting Michael back on his feet, writing music and playing guitar - has joined the band. The live line-up will vary from gig to gig. But whatever the configuration, we very much look forward to playing these songs out. We very much look forward to bringing this music - of, about and for our friend and bandmate, Michael's partner and One True Love, Summer Lindsay Serafin - to you all. We expect to release the first single from "Of Love & Loss" in the early spring, followed immediately by the physical and digital release of the full album. More soon and much love...BPX

Not really religious but love going to Choral Evensong. Always attend at St Paul’s when in London and have been going to St Thomas’s in New York for a year or two. It’s usually on Wednesday but this week instead the service was a Solemn Eucharist for All Souls Day. Essentially a requiem. Didn’t quite fully take that in before I got there. It was beautiful and I cried and cried and cried. I wrote Summer’s name down on an envelope and left it next to the hymnal. Even tho she wasn’t religious and I don’t know if I am. Just want her to find me. After, I went to Chelsea to hear Joan Didion read from her new (released today) book “Blue Nights”. It’s the follow up to “The Year of Magical Thinking”- the former about the loss of her daughter and the latter about the loss of her husband. She’s as fragile as I feel. A testament to grief and love in loss. I rode the M11 bus home up 10th Avenue stopping at D’Agostino’s to buy fat free Half n Half and a box of Gingersnaps. I’m totally ruined, drained by days end - a crying hangover. Sober for 52 days I have this kind now instead. I’m aching for her. Always. Never stops. Only deepens, grows more keen. And then a surprise, the shock that so bereft i feel a stirring kinda love for New York. The way only the lonely and brokenhearted can, I suppose…

Taking Summer's name in loving forever memory. Michael Louis Serafin-Wells.

Michael is at the Southampton Writers Conference workshopping a new play this week.

The New York Times has had some kind words about Michael's play TWO FROM THE LINE, running Off-Broadway now at Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York, citing Michael's writing as "LaBute territory with fresh angles and sustained tension". Thanks to the wonderful cast - Curran Connor and Eddie Boreovich - our fantastic director RJ Tolan, and Summer. Summer. It's all for her...

With special dedication to his love Summer, Michael is in New York opening Series "A" of Ensemble Studio Theatre's 33rd Annual Marathon of One-Act plays, performing in Qui Nguyen's "Bike Wreck" (dir: John Gould Rubin). Series "B" includes a play of his own - the stage version of TWO FROM THE LINE (dir: RJ Tolan). In lieu of a bio, both Marathon programs contain Michael's dedication to Summer and a brief excerpt from his memorial address. Now and forever it is all for her. All for Summer. All for her...

Here follows Michael's address at Summer's memorial last Monday held at The Brava Theatre in San Francisco:

I have a thousand things to say about Summer Lindsay Serafin. A thousand thousand. I’ll be saying them and thinking them and writing them down every day for the rest of my life no matter how brief or prolonged that may be. But today…Just for today…

She liked to sleep. That’s not what I wanna talk about but it has to be said. She loved sleeping. I’m listening to one her voicemails of late and she says she is so excited by the prospect of sleep. That “it is like (her) mouth is watering for sleep”. She says that. It’s good. I sometimes sleep now and just want to stay. I hope I might find her there.

It’s impossible, really. Impossible that I met her. That she “found me” she liked to say. I’m not from around here. It’s impossible that she lived in a place called “The Inner Sunset”. Impossible that she lit me up, this shining person, and held me, safely, in her orbit. Impossible. All of it. And today. Just impossible.

She was a terrible driver. Even Mike said so. I loved her battle-scared Blue Prius. The passenger side mirror in a kaleidoscope thousand pieces, dangling by a cable. A taillight busted. The bumper sagging. No, no she fixed that. The back seat full of boots and sunhats and coconut water. And tissues. She left a trail of tissues everywhere. Like Hansel & Gretel. You could follow it to its source and eventually find her.

She was – words, not for the first time, fail – an unearthly beauty. An ethereal beauty. And shockingly, entirely earthbound. Preternaturally present. She ate up life. With both tiny perfect fists. Ate it up. Actually, she ate quite beautifully. Do you remember that? Cutting and balancing petite bites, transferring them knife to fork with quiet elegance. Even bananas she ate like that. Seriously, I have a picture. I got her to try dark chocolate. She wasn’t a fan at first. She broke little bits off into tiny pieces. I looked over and she was sprinkling Equal onto them one at a time.

She was the dearest dearest girl. Nothing phony about her. If you got to know her at all, your heart just broke in two the moment you realized, the moment you saw her, really saw her and then surged with love. For her. This amazing girl.

She didn’t do anything to make it difficult, but I can understand how someone could think she was hard to get to know. She was friendly but never facile. She wasn’t frivolous. She was serious. She was fun, god, was she fun. She loved people – and this is what I wanna get it, at long last – she loved people and she took them seriously. Not everybody’s up for that. More fool they.

I’m circling the runway here, I know, but there’s one more thing I gotta say before I bring it in – she was a breathtakingly gifted actor. I met her doing Edna O’Brien’s Tir na nOg, Chris Smith’s last play at The Magic. She played the central role, a country girl in the west of Ireland who grows to young adulthood and further adventures in Dublin. And she burned that stage to cinders every goddamn night. With three broken toes. If you live here and you go to the theatre and you did not see her in that, I don’t know what to tell you. I really don’t. A year later, right after she was in Rock n Roll at ACT, she went down to Carmel to do David Hare’s The Blue Room directed by Ken Kelleher. I sat there between Linda and Coy and I just thought “god, what am I doing?” I have a perfectly healthy ego. I’m from New York. But I have never seen acting like that. She is like the supermoon. Once in a generation.

She loved her work. And she was good at it. But she had a higher calling. To love. And, yes, that is what I want to talk about. Because she told me. She told me she knew why she was here and that was to love. She was filled with love. So much love. And she wanted more than anything to share her love with others. She told me that. And there is absolutely no doubting it because you could not have a better piece of luck in this world than to have been blessed enough to have been loved by her. She was like that device they use in open heart surgery that cracks your chest open and holds it gaping, wide, so you can be healed. That fragile little muscle, scarred and scared and on the verge of shutting down, giving out, giving up, held now tenderly in her expert hands, beneath her loving, healing gaze.

Her love was tenacious, vigilant. Unflinching. I met her three years ago and she quickly became the center of my life. She didn’t drop people. If you were in, she was in. Even if you faltered because nobody had ever shown up for you before like this, she was on you. Checking in. Reminding. Different this time. Not goin’ anywhere. She hated talking on the phone but we talked every day, often for hours. For three. She knew everything about me. Things I never tell became hers.

And she made sure I knew her as well. Her gratitude, her pride in a happy childhood. Loving, devoted, would-take-a-bolt-of-lightning-for parents. Her epic struggle from the age of 5 to live. Ryan’s gifting her a kidney and the double organ transplant that saved and changed her life. The unfathomable loss of Jesse. She carried every piece of her past with pride and love and honesty into every room, knowing exactly who she was, like no one I have ever known. Or ever will.

God, how I loved her! She’s right. She did find me. I clung to her. “Like a liferaft” I told her she was, “to a drowning man.” She smiled and said, “you’re not drowning anymore.”

When my mom died last year, I was in London. I got the news in the middle of the night. I was alone. I called Summer, eight hours behind, here. When I told her, she burst into tears. And then told me to get on Skype. “I want to see you drink an entire glass of water”, she said. “And lie down. And try to sleep. I’ll be right here at my computer watching you. I will watch you while you sleep.” She watched over me like an angel, a cyber angel, and when I woke she was there with Linda getting me on a plane to New York and then on to Michigan. Then Summer flew herself to Detroit and waited in the airport all night to meet my plane. And was at my side every day for a week while I buried my mother. Who does that? Serafin love. Irrepressible, irreplaceable girl.

“When I met you”, she said “you were so wounded, so hurting, so sad – I just wanted to love you, to heal. But I never dreamed”, she added, “I would ever get so much love in return.” Who does that?

I need her. I am broken. That is as it should be. It’s supposed to be hard. She cracked my chest open. It’ll have to stay that way. Because who would go back? But it’s hard.

Summer, incredibly, had an answer for that, I think. All this is preface. She’d want to have the last word. So, I’d like to share that. It’s her Christmas card from a couple of years ago. She was in Boston doing Rock n Roll at The Huntington. It closed just before the holidays and she came to New York to exchange gifts with me. She made me promise to wait until December 25th to open it. So, I took it on the plane with me, waited til Christmas morning and opened it at my Mom’s. The gift was a beautiful blue and grey scarf she knitted. There was also a card. It’s to me but in a way it’s to us all. Everyone of us who she loved. Everyone of us who love her. And feel so lost. Because life is so lonely, the world so empty and wrong without her.

My Dearest Michael,

I’ve been working on this in the green room and backstage since we came to Boston. I’d drape it around my neck to keep warm while knitting in the dark of the freezing wings. The cast is decisively in favor of the striped color combination.

It’s Christmas day, and I’m wearing my pajamas. I’m in my P.J.’s even if you’re reading this when the sun has set. Ryan is making another bourbon and coke even if you’re reading this as the sun rises. My Dad is reading aloud shocking statistics about religion or politics, my Mom is spraying perfume on the dog, and me…? I am missing you. Maybe one day we’ll spend Christmas together.

Coy says “You are where you’re meant to be”, and while I like that idea, I know, far too well, what it feels like to be in a world where everything feels wrong – where everything is wrong. You have also been to that place. And as the world spins on its own axis, people are lost in their own needs and trials. We falter blindly, and strive endlessly. But no matter where you are, whether you should be there or not, and no matter who is present… know that you are a treasure in your own right. If the chest is buried, the key is lost, or the map stolen, it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t change the fact that it’s inside you. I just see what’s there. You carry it with you. What’s hidden can always be found.

I love you.

Your Gingersnap,

Summer

I love you, too. Love you forever. Goodnight, little sweetheart.

The Light has gone out. Summer Serafin: November 13, 1979 - March 18, 2011. Love you forever.

Michael is in rehearsals in San Francisco for David Harrower's two-character play, "Blackbird".

TWO FROM THE LINE took Best Film honors this weekend at San Francisco's 13th Scary Cow Independent Film Festival. Michael was also cited for Best Screenplay and the film took additional honors for direction and acting (ensemble).

Michael is in San Francisco this weekend for the screening of his short film TWO FROM THE LINE. The screening is part of the 13th Scary Cow Independent Film Festival and is being held at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre.

Check out the Photos page for production shots of MLW in Patrick Link's "Sweet Forgotten Flavor", staged by Youngblood Artistic Director RJ Tolan - New York, January 2011.

Michael is in New York appearing in Patrick Link's "Sweet Forgotten Flavor", staged by Youngblood Artistic Director RJ Tolan.

Michael is in rehearsals in New York with Youngblood for Patrick Link's "Sweet Forgotten Flavor" staged by Artistic Director RJ Tolan...

Michael is back in Brooklyn with Alan this weekend doing further mixes for the new Bipolar Explorer record...

Michael is in San Francisco this week to oversee editing and a rough cut of his short film TWO FROM THE LINE...

Michael is in New York working to deadline. It was ever thus...

Michael is working in London this month.

Michael is in New York at work on the new Bipolar Explorer record.

Bipolar Explorer play Brooklyn's Bar Reis tonight, Saturday August 7th, 9pm.

Check out some production stills on the "Photos" page from the first weekend of shooting "Two From The Line" -the short film I wrote adapting my play of the same name for the screen.

Michael is in New York at work on the new Bipolar Explorer record.

Michael is in San Francisco where principal photography begins this weekend for the film adaptation of his short play "Two From The Line".

Michael is in San Francisco this week and next in rehearsals and pre-production for the film adaptation of his play "Two From The Line".

Michael is in San Francisco this week casting the film adaptation of his play "Two From The Line"...